RSPB calls for new measures to raise conservation funds

Report suggests innovative ways for the UK to raise the funding needed protect species and habitats in an era of cuts

Heather at the RSPB's Farnham Heath nature reserve in Surrey. The government has considered plans to sell or give away nature reserves which it can no longer afford to maintain - but charities say they cannot afford the upkeep. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian Graham Turner

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New funding – including a levy on new homes, taxes on gardeners and farmers, and payments by businesses for natural services such as clean water – is needed to meet targets to protect and restore nature, the UK's biggest conservation charity says today.

Hundreds of millions of pounds a year are already needed to meet the gap between the funds and need for conservation, and this is likely to get worse after government spending cuts expected later this month, says the RSPB.

The report, Financing nature in an age of austerity, is a warning that ministers cannot rely on David Cameron's "big society" to take over conservation work the government cannot afford unless new measures to raise money are brought forward.

The Guardian has revealed, for example, that the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has considered a proposal to sell or give away nature reserves which it can no longer afford to maintain - but charities say they cannot afford the upkeep, especially with a fall in their donations, legacies and grants.

"Financing will be critical to meeting biodiversity goals in the future," says the RSPB's head of sustainable development, Martin Harper, in the report's introduction. "If we do not fund nature, we will continue to miss our environmental goals, and leave a world for our children that is more impoverished than the one we enjoyed."

The UK, Europe and world leaders have all failed to meet targets to halt or slow biodiversity loss by this year, with latest figures showing one in four of the UK's more threatened species and more than 40% of endangered habitats are declining.

The new government has promised to be the "greenest ever", and the coalition agreement between the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties specifically pledged halt biodiversity loss, restore habitats, protect new areas at sea, and increase environmental taxes.

However a consultants' report on protecting priority species and habitats has already warned there is a shortfall in funds of £275m a year, on top of which are the expected costs of promised marine protection areas, restoring sites of special scientific interest and other programmes, says the RSPB.

The charity says it has identified four areas for raising more money for conservation:

•Conservation credits, under which developers would fund restoration work to "offset" damage done, or a simpler scheme to levy an average £500 one-off charge on new homes to compensate for the "land take";

• New taxes on specifically damaging practices such as peat removal (which alone could raise £66m-£165m a year assuming gardeners did not switch to other products), and fertilisers and pesticides;

• Encouraging more companies, individuals and other non-government organisations to pay for conservation, using a range of measures from

regulations and eco-labels to public education;

• Getting more private organisations to pay for "ecosystem services", such as a company paying farmers to use fewer chemicals to reduce the cost of clean water.

Some ideas could be enacted quickly - such as new taxes and regulations - while others might need some years to develop, such as private finance for ecosystem services, Harper told the Guardian.

However he acknowledged that some of the suggestions would be unpopular with elements in the Conservative party who wanted less state intervention, and given concern about new taxes in a recession.

Individuals though would be "very much led by the regulatory climate and by the way in which businesses are operating", and most businesses, in turn, would need more encouragement to take care of and nurture natural resources like clean air and water the mostly enjoy for free, said Harper.

"We can ask the public to do more, we hope for that, but if that's not sufficient we need new [government] incentives," he added.